when at the casino, what does it mean "counting cards?"?

Answer 1

The term is most commonly related to blackjack. Basically card counting works on the premise that a deck or shoe of cards containing lots of aces and tens is good for the player, while a deck or shoe containing lower cards is better for the dealer (less chance of players making blackjack).

A card counter watches every card that is dealt and in his head assigns a special numerical value to them. By doing this he is tracking how many low cards have been dealt out, and how many high cards have been dealt out. When he knows that the shoe is in his favor, he bets big, and when he knows that the shoe is in the dealers favor he bets small.

A talented card counter can actually measure the point in time when the shoe is very much in the player's favor. By leveraging this information he can actually neutralize the house advantage that the casino has. Therefore he can be a long term winner.

The problem is that casinos don't like losing money. If they see a known card counter in their casinos, they refuse to allow them to play blackjack, and may even ask them to leave.

There have been many cases of card counters making a lot of money, often working in groups and wearing disguises so as to appear lucky rather than just skillful. But for every success story there are probably hundreds of people that think they can count cards, but mess it up, thus losing the advantage they thought they had.

If you are thinking of learning this skill, you'd be better off learning poker. The casino doesn't have an interest in who wins poker games, so they don't care how good you get and how many players you beat.

If you want to read a true story of card counting, by someone who is an expert at it, consider the book link.

Answer 2

Counting the cards is a system developed at MIT that teaches the person to put a value on each card, hence giving them a slight edge on predicting if the card they want, i.e. ace or four, etc., will come up. It is generally based on one, two or three deck games, not a shoe.

To cut the edge, the casino will "bury" at least one card. In some cases, if the card is turned up the casino will then remove that many cards from the desk (not showing them) into the discard pile. But if only one card is buried, it is never shown.

Though not illegal in the State of Nevada, people who are caught counting cards are asked (86ed) from the casino.

People think they have the latest is card theories of winning, then how do the casinos build those billion dollar plus resorts? No, they don't cheap because the odds are always with the house!

Answer 3

There are 52 cards in a deck (13 of each of the 4 suits). A clever card player can count what has already appeared, which means they are no longer available. For example, if all 4 Aces have already shown, then an Ace will not appear. It takes a lot of concentration, but some people can do it.